by Lois Leveen
And they did, still warm as she said, “Miss Douglass has told us all about thee. If thou will sit by me, I’ll show thee what we have made, so thou may choose a project.”
With the strangeness of it all, me a colored Miss Van Lew and her a white Zinnie and her bizarre Quaker way of speaking to boot, I couldn’t bring myself to answer.
Miss Douglass shifted ever so slightly on the settee. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable here by me?”
Zinnie Moore’s face flushed, and I realized that she thought I was spurning her. I didn’t want my teacher to think I was scared of this white woman, or any white person—I didn’t want to think it myself. And I didn’t want to be intimidated by Margaretta Forten’s fancified house, any more than by Phillipa’s snooty airs.
Searching out the room, my eye caught on an oil painting hanging on the wall, larger even than the one in Mr. Jones’s dining room but bearing the same proud eagle. I breathed in so deep, I might have been readying myself to loose one of that great bird’s chirring caws. “So long as there’s no sin in it,” I said, “I’d be happy to sit beside Zinnie Moore.”
She smiled and led me across the length of the parlor to a small worktable displaying a number of pincushions, aprons, bookmarks, and other finished wares. Much of the needlework—beaded purses, muslin caps, crocheted collars—was more advanced than I could manage. While the other women around the room returned to their sewing and conversing, I searched through the pattern case until I found a punched-paper pattern for a wall motto with the passage REMEMBER THEM THAT ARE IN BONDS, AS BOUND WITH THEM. HEBREWS 13:3. Nothing could be easier for me than that, the remembering and the stitching both, so I laid the pattern onto the worktable and drew a needle from my sewing box.
Zinnie nodded at my choice. “Thou hast picked wisely. The labor goes quickly that speaks to the heart.”
As I selected colors from the store of Berlin wools, vanity got the better of me. Keeping my voice low so that none of the other groups of ladies might hear me, I asked, “What did Miss Douglass tell you about me?”
“That thou hast come from slavery only this year, and hast already made great progress in school. She is very proud of thee, for proving that neither blackness nor slavery is an impediment to intellect.” Miss Douglass wasn’t one to flatter, so hearing her praise secondhand made me shine. “She tells us that thy parents are still in Richmond, in the condition thou lately left. I pray this may be the last Christmas thy family spends apart, and that when thy mother joins our sewing circle, we may sew only for our pleasure, because our struggle will be won.”
The thought of Mama sitting quietly among the ladies in the group amused me quite a bit. But I let Zinnie Moore think my smile was agreement with her sentiment, as we settled into our needlework.
I stitched a good half hour before summoning the courage to ask Zinnie Moore the question that was gnawing at me, as I considered how primly my teacher sat among the ladies on the far side of the grand parlor. “Miss Douglass dresses simply, but she doesn’t speak like you do. Is she also Quaker?”
“Grace Douglass, her mother, attended Arch Street Meeting every week, though she never applied to join the Society of Friends. Sarah often came with her, but I do not believe she attends anymore.” I wondered that Zinnie blushed as she added, “Most of the Friends in our sewing circle attend Green Street Meeting.” Before she could say more, the butler brought supper in.
I was disappointed that he set only a plate of buckwheat cakes, fruits, and cheeses on our worktable. Zinnie peeked out mischievously from beneath her funny cap. “Margaretta will fret that thou may think her miserly for providing such simple fare. She does it out of respect for the Friends, who keep to modesty in all things, even eat and drink.”
“Zinnie Moore, are you gossiping?” I only meant to tease, the way Hattie and I always did, but as soon as the words came out, I feared they might offend this strange lady.
She pursed her lips a moment but then grinned back at me. “ ’Tis not gossip to compliment a lady’s good nature. Nor sinful if I preserve thy high opinion of my generous friend.”
Friend. I’d never head a white lady address a negro so. This Zinnie Moore was something. A pale, slender, Quaker something.
I was up into the wee hours that night writing Mama and Papa, and I slept mighty late the next morning. When I rushed downstairs, Hattie was stamping her feet against the cold. “At long last. I was beginning to wonder whether Mrs. Upshaw had fussed you to death once and for all.”
“Sorry to keep you here freezing.” We began walking, arms linked, toward Arch Street. “I forgot you’d be waiting.”
“Forgot? Aren’t I here every morning?”
“I stayed up so late last night, I don’t think I’m quite awake this morning.”
That caught her concern. “How come Miss Douglass kept you after session? I wanted to wait, but I had to get to Emily’s right away.” Hattie’s sister was just about on her third confinement, and Hattie was fairly living at her house, helping look after Emily’s two boys. “What has our schoolmarm ordered you to?”
“Not ordered, invited. To—let me see if I can get the name right—the Philadelphia Anti-Female Slavery, I mean Female Anti-Slavery, Society.”
“You went to a Society meeting?”
“Oh no, just the sewing circle. They have a gift fair every year and—”
“Yes, I know it. Everyone knows it. Funny, I didn’t think Miss Douglass invited girls your age to her sewing circle.”
Hattie didn’t usually make much of the age difference between us—two years that, like the difference between Baltimore and Richmond, between born free and born slave, didn’t seem to add up to much, given how close we felt to each other. I looked over at her, but she held her gaze straight ahead.
We were about to cross Market Street, and suddenly I remembered my letter. “I need to stop at the post office.”
“We can’t stop. We’ll be nearly late as it is.”
For weeks I’d been too glum to eke out a word to Mama and Papa. Now that I had a proper letter, I didn’t want to delay posting it. “You go on, I’ll be there right off.”
Hattie withdrew her arm from mine. “Just remember, even Phillipa Thayer doesn’t dare come tardy to the schoolroom.” Her voice was as frosty as the morning air. “I’d hate to see you lose your new favor in Miss Douglass’s eyes.” With that, she walked off.
I hurried to the post and then up to school, barely slipping into my seat before Miss Douglass called the class to order. Hattie wouldn’t even wink or nod to me. Though I couldn’t understand what had her so ornery, I figured we’d make up as we walked home for dinner recess. But mid-morning, a knock came to the classroom door. It was Susan, the Jones’s housekeeper, with a note for Miss Douglass. When our schoolmarm read it, she instructed Hattie to gather up her things. Emily’s confinement had come, and Hattie was needed to help with the children.
The sewing circle didn’t meet but twice a week, so I sewed at the Upshaws’, too, starting that very night. As soon as we finished supper, I pulled my sewing case out and, knowing there weren’t but three rooms to the whole apartment, headed to the parlor.
Ducky eyed the case. “What’s the matter, that white lady cut off your allowance?”
Ignoring her, I smiled my contrition at Mrs. Upshaw. “Since sewing is such a fine ladies’ pastime, I’ve joined a sewing circle. I need to finish some pieces, so they can be sold at our charity fair.”
Mrs. Upshaw lit all over the idea. “A charity fair, dear, ain’t that something. Perhaps Dulcey and me can help some, too.”
Ducky squawked. “We start trying to give charity, we’re gonna end up needing to take charity.”
For once, I saw the truth in what she said. Mrs. Upshaw could outsew just about every lady I’d met at the Fortens’. But taking even a half hour a day away from her paid work would be more than she could afford.
“Mrs. Upshaw, you’re very kind to offer, and we’d do well to have such fine things as you can ma
ke. But none of these ladies sew nearly as well as you, and I think it might shame them a bit to have their work laid up next to yours.” I could tell by the way she nodded my tack was working. “You know how some people just aren’t happy if they don’t feel superior.”
Ducky snorted.
Over the next fortnight, I grew so lonely for Hattie, I bundled up against the bitter cold come Saturday and walked all the way down Shippen Street past Eleventh, to the little cottage that Emily’s husband rented for his family.
I knocked and waited, then waited some more, until Hattie finally swung open the door. She was wearing a worn dress topped with an old apron, her hair covered by a head-wrap. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Aren’t you even going to invite me in? I’m a regular icicle out in this cold.”
“You’ve got to mind the floors if you come tramping in here. I’ve only just washed them.”
I applied myself carefully to the boot scraper and lifted my damp skirts high before stepping inside. “I’ve missed you so, I can’t wait to tell you all that’s been happening at my sewing circle. And of course I want to hear what you’ve been up to.”
“What I’ve been up to is drudgery and nothing but. Cinderella to my sisters, who order me here and there like I’m a servant with five mistresses. And two demonic little masters.” She crossed her arms in that tired-of-being-tired way that Mama got whenever one of the Van Lews took sick so quick they didn’t have time to ring for a slop bucket or haul themselves to a chamber pot. “My nephews will be up from their nap any minute, ready to tear the house apart, so I’ve got no time for your silly little stories.”
Hattie was never so cross with me. “I know you’re working hard, but so am I. Zinnie Moore says my sewing has already improved a bundle. I’ve finished two wall mottoes, and I’ve even started to embroider a tea cozy.”
“That is cozy, for you, playing at being a snob like Phillipa.”
“What’s Phillipa got to do with it?”
She rolled her eyes, like I was some kind of fool. “All this time you act like you’re making fun of the better sort of colored Philadelphia, then first chance you get you run off and join them and their white ladies. You may be falling all over impressed by yourself, but I’m too busy to sit about sipping tea and listening to your nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense at all. The fair raises loads of money for abolition. You have to understand why that’s important to me. My father is a slave, my mother is—”
Before I could continue with the usual half-truth, she cut me off. “And my mother isn’t. Isn’t alive. And my father is always shooing me away every time the wind blows, so he can go off to Chambersburg on business. My sisters are all huddled upstairs with Emily, carrying on as if it’s some secret society and I can’t be a member because it’s only for married ladies.” She turned away, speaking more to herself than to me. “And now you go leaving me, too.”
I caught her arm. “Don’t be jealous. You’re still my best friend. Just not my only friend. After Emily is recovered, you can come to the sewing circle, meet the Quaker ladies, and be friends with them like I am.”
“If you’re such good friends, why don’t you go over to the Quaker Meeting sometime, instead of tagging along with my family to Mother Bethel? See how you feel about Quakers then.” A toddler’s cry sounded from upstairs. “I’ve got to go. Please be so good as to see yourself out.”
She was up the staircase before I could say another thing.
Her words stuck with me as I walked back toward Gaskill Street. I spent plenty of Sundays at Mother Bethel, for the pleasure of being with Hattie and her family. But services there always made me miss our Richmond prayer meeting. Like trading warm woolen mittens for a pair of leather gloves all decorated with fancywork, only to realize the gloves were too thin and too tight to be any comfort against the cold. So maybe I wouldn’t bother tagging along, as Hattie put it. At least not till she was done fuming at me.
I wasn’t about to join up with the Friends, of course, but I was curious about them. Before I met Zinnie, I thought the stiff and somber Friends as ill-named as Spruce and Pine and Chestnut, Philadelphia’s nearly treeless streets. But Zinnie proved me wrong, she was so friendly. Still, I wasn’t sure I dared to walk into her prayer meeting.
Then I remembered that Zinnie said most of the women from the sewing circle attended the Green Street Meeting House. If I went to the Meeting House on Arch Street, I wouldn’t be likely to see anyone I knew. If I liked it there, then I could go to Green Street, too, sometime. Hadn’t Zinnie told me Miss Douglass’s mother went to meeting for years, without becoming a regular member?
The idea was still catching in my head as I crossed beneath the sign for GRIFFITH BROS. SHIRTS, COLLARS, GLOVES, & HOSIERY. Looking up at the store, I thought of the Quaker women in the sewing circle, with their nearly identical clothing. Even when I passed a stranger on the street, it was easy enough to tell if she was a Quaker by her clothes. I couldn’t go to one of their Meetings wearing something that might seem extravagant. I had one dress, a navy blue bombazine, that might do.
I stepped into Griffith Bros. and bought a plain white collar and shawl, along with a five-pleated gray bonnet, the kind Quaker ladies wore over their sheer caps when they went out in public. The collar would cover the bright buttons on my bodice, and the shawl would hide the full sleeves. I spent the afternoon back at the Upshaws’, taking out the stitches on my lace cuffs and skirt trim.
The two-story Arch Street Meeting House stretched the better part of a block, and Sunday morning it loomed no more welcoming than Mother Bethel. I paced the walk outside for a quarter hour, nerving myself to follow the steady trickle of people going through the plain, heavy doors. Inside, rows of wooden benches rippled forward from all four of the unadorned white walls, befuddling me. There wasn’t so much as a pulpit, and not a single cross to be seen. The wide planks of the wood floor weren’t even varnished. Broad square columns along three sides of the room supported a balcony where children milled about.
All around me, people were taking their seats. Slipping into an empty pew, I kept my head down, occupying myself with straightening my gloves.
I hardly even knew when the worshipping started. No preacher spoke. People just stood one at a time, here and there, saying whatever seemed to come to their mind. They didn’t shout to glory or recite a hymn or any such thing. Ladies stood and spoke just as often as men. Sometimes it was quiet for a minute or two before someone rose. I couldn’t even be sure they were prayerful, until one young man thanked God for blessing him and his wife with a healthy new son.
As I looked over to where he was standing, a pinched-looking white woman in the pew in front of me caught my eye. She breathed in sharply, her mouth tight and her nostrils flared, and pointed to a bench in the back row, behind one of the squat pillars.
Ashamed to be found out of place, I gathered myself up and moved. As I came around the side of the pillar, I saw that the only other occupant of the bench was an elderly negro, stooped with age.
“You new here, too?” I whispered as I slid in beside him.
He shook his head. “I was coming here long before thou was born. Nearly sixty years, since I first worked for a Quaker family.”
“So why are you on the newcomers’ bench?”
“Newcomers’ bench? The Friends have no such thing.”
I nodded toward where I’d been sitting. “But a lady over there directed me to move back here.”
“We must sit here, on the bench for negroes.”
The man’s words stung me like a slap.
It was insult enough to be kept out of the academy Bet attended, and degradation aplenty to be thrown off an omnibus. But the way Zinnie Moore sat beside me at the sewing circle, even sharing supper, I never thought Quakers could be so cruel. Despite all the seeming sweet and humble, this prayer meeting was no different from St. John’s, the Van Lews’ church, where slaves were sent to the balcony while their ma
sters worshipped below. Mama was fit to be tied the one time Bet brought us there. Without a word, I rose and left the Meeting House.
I walked bent and bowed against the hard rush of chill December air, as I hurried away from Arch Street. I was angry at that weasel-faced woman for sending me back to that bench, angry at the Quakers for having such a bench at all, angry at the elderly colored man for sitting on that bench for five decades or more. Angry at Zinnie for pretending Quakers were different from other whites. But I was most angry at myself, for forgetting what Mama and Papa taught me, the thing that guided every moment of my life in Richmond. I could hear Papa saying that the best way with white folks is out of their way, could picture Mama maneuvering about the Van Lew house or the city’s shops, ever vigilant for any harm that might be directed her way, or mine. Missing my parents so, I berated myself for not remembering their most important lesson. And I vowed to hold myself more cautious when it came to Zinnie Moore, the same way Mama did with Bet.
It was the very first Christmastide I even had so much as a purse to jingle coins in, and you can bet I set myself to thinking what to buy Mama and Papa.
I considered every practical thing you could imagine, clothing and kitchenware and whatnot, and rejected them all. Papa’s just-becauses had always thrilled me, and now that it was my turn to purchase, I couldn’t choose a necessity over an indulgence. As December wore on, I sewed and thought, thought and sewed. What I really wanted was for us all to be together. Though I couldn’t manage that, at last I puzzled out a way to send something that was as close as I could get to going home myself.
My dearest Mama & Papa
Merry Christmas! My gift to you as you can see is a daguerreotype of me. I know it may seem extravagant as colored folks in Richmond never have such things. Negroes can get daguerreotypes made here easy enough though not the poorest ones which I guess is most negroes but those who can afford it do not have to worry because there is a colored man to make them for us.
It is Miss Douglass’s own cousin David Bustill Bowser. He is a painter but also a daguerreotypist & a sign-maker & sometime barber. It is too bad that he cannot earn enough just as an artist as his paintings are very fine & Hattie’s father & all the best colored families have one for their house but lucky for me he makes daguerreotypes too. I saw him last summer marching in the parade leading the Loyal Order of Odd Fellows. I did not know he was my teacher’s cousin till Hattie told me so. Only close up did I see he has the same serious eyes & purposeful manner as Miss Douglass though with stocky build & neatly trimmed goatee.